Apps Update 2012

Updated desktop apps loaded on my pc – ‘cause it’s time to upgrade, yay! It’s a mix of freeware, shareware and commercial applications.

… Major geek alert, skip with impunity!

Games

• Games I’m currently playing.

Graphics

• Anti-Twin (freeware) – File duplicate seeker and deleter. Searches on a byte-by-byte basis.
• Trimble Sketchup (freeware) – 3D modelling app for when I want to build something – difficult as all hell but satisfying when your brilliant concept is visualized.
• Polaroid (freeware) – Cool polaroideninizer effect for pics.
• Windows Live Photo Gallery (freeware) – Photo gallery viewer to attempt to sort through years of pics.
• Amp Font Viewer (freeware) — Font viewer and installer/unistaller.
• Faststone Image Viewer (freeware) — Image viewer with an excellent lossless image tilt feature amongst others.
• IrfanView (freeware) — I use it to view tiffs and quick play of MP3s.
• Freehand (commercial) — Raster image creation and page layout. No longer supported — way cheaper than Illustrator.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 (commercial) — Photoshop lite. Perfect for my amateur digital photo manipulation.

Internet

• Filezilla FTP Client (freeware) -– Finally an FTP client which works with server side proxy servers.
• Firefox (freeware) — I love add-ons.
• Thunderbird (freeware) – Email client, hooked up with Wunderlist and Google Calendar.
• Free Download Manager (freeware) — Downloader for those massive files which keep hanging half way through.
• Internet Explorer — Can’t get rid of the damn thing.
• Windows Live Writer (freeware) – Used to write blog entries to Blogger.

Media

• AudioGrabber (freeware) — Great CD ripper I use to create high-fidelity MP3s for serving on TVersity and play thru my D-Link 520 media server. Use the latest version of lame.
•  SPlayer (freeware) – Video viewer.
• MusicBee (freeware) – Audio organiser. Finally a replacement that works to replace the crappy bloatware that is Itunes.
• MP3Tag (freeware) – Cleans up MP3 tags.

Misc

• PDF-XChange (freeware) – Pdf reader, replaces Adobe Reader nicely.
• AVG 12 (freeware) — Antivirus.
• Bullzip (freeware) — Creates PDFs from any program’s print option.
• Everything (freeware) — Local file/folder search app to replace Windows’ poor search functionality.
•  Fences Pro (Shareware) – Creates virtual fences on the desktop to create zones for certain icons.
• Imaging Pro (shareware) — Imaging app. Ours is an ancient version — very handy for scanning faxes to be sent via email. Overkill at its current price.
• jZip (freeware) — Zip/Unzipper.
• Vista Switcher (freeware) – great replacement with additional functionality for the ALT-Tab windows function to switch between running apps.
• Eaton PSP (hardware) — UPS software interface.
• Roboform (shareware) — Username/Password and form filler inner. 
• MenuApp (freeware) — App launcher, great way to untie oneself from the start menu, also great for launching frequently used folders.
• TED Notepad (freeware) — Notepad replacement.
• tinySpell (freeware) — Memory resident spell checker, works in any app. Love it, gotten used to constant pinging as it bitches.
• TrueCrypt (freeware) — Data encryption app. Great way to hide your porn multimedia collection from prying eyes.
• UltraVNC (freeware) — Allows remote use of the server from my desktop. Handy to reboot the server with.
• VistaSwitcher (freeware) – Speed Up Windows Alt-Tab

Office

• Darkroom (freeware) – Simple writing application without any distractions (green screen).
• OpenOffice (freeware) — MS Office replacement.
• Lotus Smartsuite (commercial) — Desktop Database app .
• The Sage (freeware) — English Dictionary and Thesaurus.

Utilities

• Anti-Twin (freeware) – Search and action duplicate files.
• CDBurnerXP (freeware) — CD\DVD authoring.
• CCleaner (freeware) — Crap Cleaner, deletes unwanted files etc. Useful to cleanup the registry.
• Cobian Backup (freeware) — Backup app. Should use it more frequently.
• SyncBackFree (freeware) – Backup app. More updated than Cobian.
• Revo Uninstaller (freeware) — App uninstaller. Cleans out the registry after unistallation as well.
• GetDataBack (shareware) — Brilliant! Saved my butt when my harddrive crashed, despite being hooked to a UPS. Recovered almost all the files on a seriously stuffed harddrive.
• Winstep SMO (freeware) — Start menu organiser. Excellent app for keeping installed apps in the categorisation I’ve used above. Cannot get rid of its default categories though.
• PC-Wizard 2012 (freeware) – System/hardware info app, also used to test the performance of a PC.
• Ampps (freeware) – Linux like webserver for windows, used to develop websites using Joomla and OpenCart.
• FileSeek (freeware) – File searching by specific text strings within files, used for OpenCart searches.
• WinMerge (freeware) – Differencing and merging tool. Compare folders and files, shows differences between text files.
• MyPhoneExplorer (freeware) – backs up contacts and texts on cellphones.
• Partition Wizard (freeware) – disk and partition copying between harddrives.

Firefox Add-Ons

• Adblock Plus — Ads were yesterday!
• Add Bookmark Here 2 — Add a menuitem “Add Bookmark Here…” to Bookmarks Menu.
• AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox — Allows the use of Roboform in Firefox.
• Bookmark Duplicate Detector — Helps you find, move and remove duplicate bookmarks. It also notifies you when you are adding a duplicate bookmark.
• Bookmarks Menu – View toolbar bookmarks in a button drop-down menu.
• Brief — A RSS feed reading extension.
• CheckPlaces – Checks whether bookmarks still exists.
• CsFire – Prevents cros-domain requests
• deskCut — Create desktop shortcuts from the context-menu.
• Enter Selects — Press enter in the AwesomeBar to select the first result.
• Firebug – Web development tool.
• FireGestures — Executes various commands with mouse gestures.
• Flash Video Dowloader – Downloads videos.
• Fuzzy Time — Displays the time in a fuzzy way in the status-bar.
• Menu Editor — Customize application menus.
• Navigate Up – Navigates up one or more URL levels.
• NoSquint – Site specific resizing of pages for tired eyes.
• nURL Suffix — Change the suffixes which are used to complete a URL.
• Sort Places – Sorts bookmarks.
• Stop Youtube Autoplay – jip, that’s what it does.
• Tab Mix Plus — Tab browsing with an added boost.
• Text2Link – open URLs that aren’t in HTML format.
• TinyURL Generator – generates a TinyURL .
• Turn off the Lights – darkens page to hide all content except for video playing.
• UI Fixer – changes location of Menu button.

Thunderbird Add-Ons

• Clippings – Save frequently entered text for pasting later.
• Compact Menu 2 – Adds a compact menu button to the navigation toolbar.
• CompactHeader – Reduce the header size to two lines.
• FoxClocks – displays time in status bar.
• Lightning – Calendar app for Firefox.
• Provider for Google Calendar – provides hook-in for Google Calendar.
• WAT – Creates web tabs. Used to display the below mentioned apps:
• Wunderlist – To-Do list app which syncs across all devices.
• Evernote – Note creation app which syncs across all devices.